Yet, as emotionally, psychologically and financially painful as media scandals can be, they are ultimately good medicine for a profession that demands accountability from those it covers — but often fails to see or admit its own shortcomings.
I know well what it’s like to live inside a media scandal. I recently stepped down as the ombudsman at NPR, where I served as an independent listener representative and wrote a blog about the network’s decision-making and foibles. Last fall, I experienced first-hand the backlash from the biggest scandal in NPR’s 40-year history: when management snapped and impetuously fired longtime news analyst Juan Williamsafter he said on Fox News that he got nervous when he saw people in “Muslim garb” on airplanes.
A new book by Williams, detailing his side of the story, shows how important it can be for a news organization to turn a scandal into an opportunity to improve and try to rebuild credibility.
“Muzzled: The Assault on Honest Debate,” gives Williams’s version of events, which, not surprisingly, conflicts with NPR’s. While I understood the decision to fire Williams after what had become an untenable relationship, the way it transpired was inexcusable and cost NPR greatly. By the time the Williams controversy — and a subsequent fundraising embarrassment in March — had blown over, NPR’s chief executive, chief fundraiser and head of news were gone, and federal funding for the public broadcasting system was in greater peril.
But NPR did one thing right: After Williams was summarily dismissed by phone following a decade with the network, NPR brass took a close look at what had happened and why. Clearly, he deserved better. (To contrast his treatment with another example, when I had to downgrade my assistant from full to part time because of budget woes, human resources walked me through every step and gave my assistant plenty of time to absorb the news.)
The truth, as I discovered through looking into many complaints about Williams, is that he had long been on thin ice for making opinionated comments on Fox, where he was a contributor, that he would not have been allowed to make on air for NPR. And NPR editors had been unhappy with the quality and preparation of his on-air work. It didn’t help that in 2007 the Pentagon wanted to pull NPR’s credentials in Iraq after Williams said incorrectly on Fox that Gen. David Petraeus had asked the White House for permission to go into Iran.
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